I am a busy college student who is taking 24 credits, working on a senior project and trying to find a job for when I get out of college all at the same time, so I haven't really been keeping up with the whole Cliven Bundy thing. I mean, I have heard about it, read a couple of diaries, skimmed some news stories and assumed that this was just some dumbass on a soapbox about rights and freedumbz and all that good tea party empty talking points nonsense.
Today, I had a little downtime, and to be quite honest, I got totally bored. I am so used to having information mainlined that once I don't have anything to do, I find something to do. Today, apparently, was Cliven Bundy day.
Here are a few of my observations on the whole situation:
A couple of nights ago I watch a show called "Crime of the Century: Oklahoma City Bombing", which was made by CNN. As I was watching, I noticed something that CNN did that made me kind of ill, actually. They completely washed over McVeigh's connection to the RW militia movement. I assume they did it to look fair and balanced (you know, every opinion has equal weight, even the opinions of domestic terrorists), but it ripped out all of the context of McVeighs actions in April of 1995.
Mr. McVeigh's ideology is a particularly virulent and violent brand of extreme individualism that suggests that the Federal Government is not the legitimate government of the United States. Not only that, but their belief in violence as a tactic to communicate their hateful brand of race based ideology makes them quite dangerous and extreme as a group. Many people like to think that Mr. McVeigh was a lone wolf, or at least had a few accomplices that helped him and that was it. That is absolutely not the case. Had it not been for the extensive domestic terrorist network (also called the "militia movement" by pundits) Tim McVeigh would not have had an ideology on which to base his violent attack on the Murrah Building.
It is this very same anti-government conspiratorial thinking that has lead us to the Cliven Bundy debacle of the last couple of weeks. You can see threads of Tim McVeigh's ideology in Bundy's twisted rhetoric. When I began reading today I thought the man was just some idiot grabbing for his 15 minutes of fame. Now, I see him as something much more sinister: this man may just inspire the next Tim McVeigh. Given the political polarization today, this hateful anti-government, racist ideology is not only mistaken: it is dangerous, and could cost many, many people their lives.
We must not take this man lightly. His spew may seem dimwitted and ignorant to us, but this shit resonates with poor, disenfranchised, desperate white males on a very deep level. I know that this has probably already been said, and if not, probably crosses the line, but I do not want this man to become a right wing martyr. I do not want him to become the inspiration for another attack on the scale of Oklahoma City. I don't want to see some fucked up kid, fresh off a war take up this man's ideological battle for his own.
We need to counter the bullshit coming out of the Bundy Clan swiftly and forcefully. We need to be on top of every aspect of this story. You think that Bridgegate was huge? We need to make this story even bigger.